


Vices

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Civil War (Marvel), Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Sorry, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Protective Steve Rogers, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 00:45:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4940212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“More science fiction?” Steve asked. “Don’t you ever get tired of that nonsense?”<br/>Bucky glanced at the iron lung. “You got a big machine breathing for you, Steve. Your life is science fiction.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vices

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as practice after a long bout of writers' block to get my head back in the game. Not entirely sure it worked, but hey, now I have several thousand more words of unrepentant h/c. 
> 
> Please see end notes for warnings, etc.

_The mediator between head and hands must be the heart._

—Thea von Harbou, _Metropolis_

* * *

**1939**

The day after Steve’s twenty-first birthday, he collapsed. Two men who didn’t smile or make any eye contact put his frail, breathless body on a stretcher, took him to a hospital in an ambulance that sped through the streets.

Nobody would let Bucky in to see him. Sarah came out to the waiting room and gave him updates, clad in her bright candy stripes. They belied the same worried shadow in her eyes that Bucky felt in his.

The doctors had to put Steve in a negative pressure ventilator, she said; an iron lung, a machine that breathed for him so he wouldn’t have to. His lungs finally gave out on him—her little boy and his little lungs, too small to carry around his big heart.

She didn’t have to tell Bucky that Steve might not make it. The truth hung between them in the stale air of the hospital, under the buzzing bright lights, the slow-moving ceiling fans providing no relief from the oppressive heat of midsummer, the muted sounds of a radio in the corner while an announcer commented on the Dodgers game.

It was any old Wednesday in July. Just yesterday they were eating peach pie on a fire escape to celebrate Steve’s birthday, got the peaches as payment for repainting the old Beckett Market sign down the street. Bucky had reached out and swiped a crumb off Steve’s lower lip, and Steve gave him that look like he did sometimes, features bereft of their usual hard anger, the weight of the world momentarily lifted from his thin shoulders. Even though Bucky had shit for brains and nothing going for him but a smart mouth and a solid left hook, Steve still looked at him like he hung the moon.

***

**2014**

Steve slammed his palm against the side of the flashlight. The light flickered in the darkness before coming back to full power.

“I’m pretty sure this place is empty, man,” Sam whispered behind him. “Looks as cleaned out as the rest of them.”

“That’s what I thought at Lehigh too,” Steve muttered, guiding Sam through a maze of basement hallways. A scratching noise echoed off to their left, and Steve shot the beam of the flashlight around, caught the quick scutter of a rat into a dark corner.

“Didn’t you almost die at Lehigh?” Sam asked, still whispering despite his conviction that the place was empty.

Gone were the days of HYDRA sleeper cells and morally ambiguous SHIELD agents. Stark and his troops started hitting hard, enlisting heroes for his special new Superhero Registration Enforcement team. It reminded Steve an awful lot of the Gestapo, but he guessed that was why they disagreed on the Registration Act to begin with. Steve, Sam, and their small squad of vigilantes and rebels hid out underground in Fury’s old safehouse outside of DC, biding their time and waiting to strike.

Splitting his attention between looking for Bucky and leading a war proved difficult, and sleep was a commodity these days, but...

“It’s worth it if Bucky might be here.” Steve came to a fork in the path, swept the flashlight down the next hallway to the right, then to the left. The beam faded before it stopped at a dead end on either side, but to the right, he caught sight of cobweb in the ceiling swaying with a slight breeze. He turned right, tightened his fist on the leather strap of his shield until it dug into his palm.

“Why would he hide in the easiest place to find him?” Sam asked, standing so close to Steve’s back that he could feel body heat through his t-shirt, covered in dirt and grime, sweating despite the damp coldness of the underground facility.

“Maybe he’s not hiding.”

***

It was only six floors, Bucky thought, squinting toward the midday sun at one particular window out of a hundred. The dark red brick of the hospital jutted out unevenly, making hand- and foot-holds all the way up. He could climb the gutter part way and then catch onto the molding, scoot his way across.

Bucky had fallen off worse things in his life. The fellas at the docks sometimes pushed each other into the harbor for kicks. One time Becca got so mad at him for teasing her about her glasses that she shoved him off the fire escape by accident. The dumpster below caught his fall, but every winter, he still got a twinge in his back from it, even though he’d never mentioned it. No use complaining when everybody else seemed to have it so much worse.

Bucky would jump off a cliff for Steve if he had to. Six storeys was really nothing compared to how far he was willing to fall for Steve.

He rolled up his sleeves, still filthy from a long morning at the docks, and hopped onto the lid of a dumpster, grabbed the gutter drain, and found his footing. Scaling a building made slow work: he moved up or to the left, sometimes back down again just to make it further on another path. He’d steady himself and look around for his next move, over and over.

It reminded him of chess. Steve taught him how to play when they were kids, but Bucky was never any good at it. The only time he ever won was when Steve let him, and he could tell Steve let him because he told Bucky he did a good job, smiled all big and pretty and crooked. This was the same guy who would see a fella make a pass at a dame and say something about it, then proceed to get the everloving hell beaten out of him instead of running away.

So, the way Bucky saw it, he’d never won a game of chess, because Steven Grant Rogers never lost anything gracefully in his whole damn life.

The problem with Bucky’s current game of chess, though, was that instead of going up against Steve, strategic grand-master punk that he was, his opponent was gravity. And instead of knocking over some chipped wooden pieces from Steve’s pa’s old chess set, Bucky would fall to his death.

It took him almost an hour, limbs trembling with effort, close to giving out on him, but he finally managed to drag himself onto Steve’s windowsill and peer inside to make sure the room was empty. He couldn’t see anybody, but a white curtain separator obscured his view.

Bucky jimmied open the window—which should’ve been open anyway, it was so damn hot—and climbed inside, the rubber soles of his shoes taping too loud on the checkered tile floor. The room smelled like motor oil and cough syrup, and beyond the muffled sounds of nurses’ heels clacking up and down the hallway, the room thrummed with the steady grinding of several machines, followed by hydraulic puffs of air.

His legs could barely hold him up anymore, and his arms lay heavy and useless at his side, clothes soaked with sweat, only alleviated by the dull breeze of the solitary ceiling fan. He managed to reach up and tug off his hat, run his fingers through his soaked hair to keep the strands from dripping onto his face. He wrung the damp cloth of his cap in his sore hands, skin blistered, peeling off at the fingertips and the insides of his knuckles.

When he pulled the curtain back, he left a few smudges of blood on the nice white linen.

The iron lung looked like the beer cans that littered the floor of Bucky’s pa’s workshop, sideways with big rivets and a couple circular windows. Inside, Bucky could see Steve’s little body, two paddles on his chest pressing up and down, up and down in time with the whirring of the machine.

The only part of him not in the ventilator was his head, blond hair messy and matted down. His long eyelashes fanned over his porcelain skin, paler than usual; lips, too, normally bright pink and grinning at Bucky, challenging him or mocking him or cursing up a storm. In Bucky’s mind sometimes, kissing him, too, but he didn’t like to think about that in the light of day.

Steve craned his neck around and opened his eyes, slow and drowsy as his sight came into focus. A little wrinkle dented between his eyebrows, the kind he got when he thought too hard or when somebody made him angry.

Voice thin and strained, he asked, “Bucky?”

***

Steve stopped, abrupt, and Sam followed suit. He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, focused on filtering out each sound in the dank atmosphere of the abandoned HYDRA base: a soft breeze coming in from the ventilation ducts; the squeaking and scurrying of dozens of rodents; Sam’s steady breath, the dull throb of his heartbeat; the rushing sound of blood pulsing in his own veins; and...there—a pained grunt, ragged breathing, metal plates grinding against each other.

Steve opened his eyes and sprinted toward the sound. The flashlight flickered off, but his vision adjusted to the darkness. He heard Sam curse somewhere behind him, follow after him slower, more cautious than Steve. At another fork in the labyrinth of hallways, Steve stopped again, closed his eyes and listened. An ominous grinding came from the chamber to the left, followed by an agonized shout. As he followed it, a dim light hailed him at the end of the tunnel. It took eternity to reach, each step landing in time with his racing heart, the hall stretching longer the further he went, Sam’s footsteps fading behind him as he failed to catch up.

Back in the war, Steve would go rushing into Nazi camps on a wing and a prayer, no-holds-barred, but Bucky always had his back with a trained eye behind the barrel of a rifle. In a battle of Steve against a dozen HYDRA agents, Bucky would have bullets between the eyes of at least seven before they even knew what hit them.

And after, when they made it back to camp and nobody else was around, Bucky would pull Steve in by the belt loops, run his hands over Steve’s hips, a sly smile on his face, licking his lips while he let his eyes trail down to Steve’s.

“Gotta be more careful out there, Captain,” he’d say with the same kind of cockiness he directed at pretty girls and men looking to hire. James Buchanan Barnes could charm the pants off the devil himself if he wanted to, and whenever he directed it at Steve, all semblance of strategic thought flew right out of his head. “Just ‘cause you’re big now doesn’t mean you’re indestructable.”

“Easy to believe when I got my best guy at my back,” Steve would reply. Bucky had developed a newfound hollowness by then. His eyes carried a dark shadow that hadn’t been there before he’d gotten captured, hidden by glittering arrogance and well-oiled charisma.

Now the shadow was all that remained as the Winter Soldier attempted to wrench his arm from where it lay trapped in a device akin to a trash compactor, the metal plates grinding together, drowned out by a pained groan that wrecked Steve’s heart to hear. Shoulders shrugged up like a wolf’s hackles, Bucky looked at Steve through strands of unkempt hair, wild-eyed and afraid like a cornered beast.

Steve dropped the flashlight and his shield slid off his arm, clattering to the ground with a metallic thud that echoed through the empty halls. He fell to his knees in front of the Winter Soldier, cupped his face in his hands, looked into his eyes to find any semblance of the man he used to know. His voice wavered as he asked, “Bucky?”

***

“The hell are you doing here?” Steve asked, ragged and raspy, a glint of anger growing in his eyes.

Bucky wanted to reach out and touch him, smooth his hair back and feel his forehead, make sure he wasn’t running hot; an absurd habit, because Steve was in a hospital and the doctors probably checked all those things every couple hours.

Still, nobody took care of Steve like Bucky did. Nobody knew exactly what to say to get Steve to carry around his inhaler, to top it off at the pharmacy when it got empty. Nobody knew how to get Steve to admit he wasn’t feeling right sometimes, and then how to measure that admittance against the litany of health problems at Steve’s disposal.

Bucky shrugged. “Heard your nurse was a pip.”

“That’s my mother you’re talking about.”

“I know,” Bucky replied, smiling despite the rocks in his gut, the magnetic instinct to drag Steve out of the lung and make a break for it, kiss him better and never let him go again. He could feel a lump rise in his throat, seeing Steve like this, helpless and small, the illusion of his big persona shattered by the reality of his weak body.

Steve’s mouth twitched into a small smile, the heat of his glare dissipating by the second. “You lay a hand on my ma and I’ll tear you a new one.”

Bucky looked down the length of the ventilator. “How?”

“Just you wait. I’m gonna get outta this thing and be six feet tall, two bucks wet.”

“Sure you will, pal.” Bucky peered through one of the little windows. “Makin’ great progress already.”

“Who’d you work over to get in here anyway?”

Bucky looked down at the cap in his trembling hands, picked at the tag his ma sewed into the brim that read _Barnes_. He was getting too old for newsboys anymore, but he couldn’t afford much else, certainly not the kind of hats in the magazines, nor the suits that went with them. He could also enlist, get himself a nice army-green cap like he’d seen on all the posters.

 _Bet you’d get all the dames if we joined up,_ Steve would say, enticing him. The war was all anybody ever talked about anymore, seemed like. _C’mon, Buck, it’s our duty as citizens of the United States._

No way, no how would Steve ever make it into the military, and Bucky was too damn busy covering Steve’s sorry ass to go overseas and cover someone else’s.

 _Ain’t my fight_ , Bucky always replied before changing the subject, an answer he practiced more and more these days, because all Steve wanted was to serve his country, but all Bucky wanted was Steve.

“I didn’t work anybody over,” Bucky admitted, though in truth, he tried. “I climbed in.”

“I’m on the sixth floor.”

Bucky shrugged. “Wasn’t anything. Like a stroll in the park. You coulda done it with your eyes closed I bet.”

“Bucky.”

Bucky glanced at Steve, who gave him _the look_ —the kind he got when Bucky would step in on all his fights and beat the living daylights out of anybody who dared lay a finger on Steve; when Bucky would fuss over Steve’s injuries and illnesses, ignoring his own; when Bucky would blow his entire paycheck on whatever medicine Steve couldn’t afford, or art supplies so that he wouldn’t go stir-crazy during one of his bouts of illness, or day-old bread and cheap cuts of beef so he could get some meat on his bones.

“Had to see you,” Bucky muttered, quiet against the sound of the ventilator. Steve’s gaze softened, and Bucky couldn’t stop himself this time; he ran his fingers through Steve’s hair, combed it to the side for him and out of his face, mirroring a mannerism Steve was unable to do for himself. Steve closed his eyes, leaned into the touch. Bucky only ever got to touch him like this when nobody else was around; nobody to give them a side-eye or flat-out tell them it was wrong.

But it always felt too right to be wrong, so Bucky kept doing it—brushing thighs together at the dinner table, squeezing Steve’s knee sometimes and maybe letting his hand trail a little too far upward just to see him flush across the bridge of his nose, keeping a possessive hand at the small of his back like he’d do for a dame at a dance, tickling the soft spot right above his collarbone so that he’d shrug his shoulders up and swat Bucky’s hand away.

And sometimes in winter, when Bucky’s bedroom grew too cold to sleep in, they’d lay out the sofa cushions in the living room near the furnace and cover themselves in piles of quilts, shrink the world small enough so it was just the two of them. Bucky would make some crass joke, and Steve, scandalized, would shove him at the shoulder and laugh, but Bucky would catch his hand, hold it for a few beats too long before letting go again.

A knock on the door pulled Bucky from his reverie. He slid his cap back on and mouthed, _I’ll come back tonight,_ while backing away.

The door opened just as Bucky slipped out the window.

***

In Steve’s mind, it had been a little over a year since Bucky fell. They survived longer apart when Bucky first shipped off and Steve spent his time getting stamped 4F all over New York, taking bluesie gigs for quick cash. Yet, as he looked into Bucky’s eyes, Steve still managed to feel every second of that seventy years, unimaginable trauma and torture behind them.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Bu—” Steve stopped himself short and instead reiterated, “I’m not gonna hurt you.” He placed a gentle hand on Bucky’s shoulder, slid the collar of his tattered shirt down to make sure the juncture of his prosthetic and skin wasn’t broken or torn. The grafting created waves of scars, like the old typographic maps of Europe they spent days pouring over during the war, heads together and talking nothing but shop and strategy. Steve loved Peggy, missed her something fierce, but Bucky had always been an integral part of who Steve was. Standing beside each other gave him a sense of completeness and belonging that nothing else ever could.

And when Steve lost him, when he watched Bucky fall from the train, his heart fell right along with him, and all that remained was a gaping emptiness that made Steve drive a plane into the Antarctic, made him drop his shield into the Potomac and accept his fate, made him fall to his knees in front of the deadliest man in the world and take every bit of what he deserved for failing him.

Despite his vulnerable state, Bucky reached out, gripped Steve’s throat in his good hand, and said through gritted teeth, “I’m not him.”

Steve grabbed his wrist, choked out, “You are.” Bucky’s hand clamped tighter around his neck. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.” Steve gasped for air, squeezed his eyes shut. “You were born…” _Gasp_. “...March tenth, nineteen-seventeen…” _Gasp._ “Oldest of four.”

Steve saw stars behind his eyelids, blinked them open to a stormy ocean of familiar blue and grey staring back at him, vision blurring at the edges and everything turning white. He wouldn’t fight back, couldn’t fight back after all they’d been through to get here. He’d never backed down from a fight in his whole life, not even that time he got cornered by three bullies in the alleyway behind Beckett’s. They swiped some bubblegum and a car mag, and Steve called them out on it. Old man Beckett had been good to Steve and his ma, and he didn’t deserve getting swindled out of a nickel’s worth of profit.

Steve lost that fight, because he lost every fight, but getting knocked down never mattered as much as standing back up.

Now, though, Bucky could point a gun right between his eyes and Steve wouldn’t move a muscle to stop him from pulling the trigger.

“Jesus,” Sam said in the doorway, and rushed inside. He yanked Bucky’s hand off Steve’s throat and dragged Steve to the other side of the room. “Anyone ever point out you got a serious problem putting yourself in the line of fire?”

“Once or twice,” Steve replied, hoarse, heaving in breaths until he regained full consciousness. Sam held out a hand to him and he took it, sliding up against the cement wall.

He turned his attention back to Bucky. A screeching noise emitted from the device as it slowly crushed his arm, and Bucky shouted in pain whenever it moved, an inch at a time in short bursts. The machine stopped and the tension dissipated from Bucky’s muscles. He looked at the ground and whispered, defeated, “I remember you.”

***

Bucky scaled the hospital wall again later that night, after he finished his afternoon shift at the auto shop. His muscles and hands ached from earlier in the day, and the lack of light made it a near-impossible feat.

Once he made it to Steve’s room, he hoisted himself inside and had to hold the windowsill to catch his breath. It felt like blasphemy, gulping in all that air when Steve lay right next to him, lungs unable to do the same. As soon as he was able, he plastered on a grin and grabbed up a chair, dragged it next to the ventilator. He pulled a tattered old paperback out of the back pocket of his coveralls and took a seat.

Steve looked at him with that angry wrinkle between his eyes again because he was no good at any other kind of facial expression. “You came back.”

“‘Course I did. I said I would.”

“Thought you had a date with Louanne McGillicutty tonight.”

“Your ma been talking about me again?”

“Never shuts up about you.”

Bucky grinned. “She’s got good taste.”

“So why are you here?” Steve leveled a surprisingly intimidating glare for a small guy trapped in a big machine.

Bucky shrugged and replied, “You know how it goes. Broad took one look at my ugly mug and ran the other way. Got nothing better to do tonight.”

“Lotta pretty girls out there.”

“Yeah,” Bucky replied, and quietly admitted, “not prettier than you though.”

Steve may have blushed all the way to the tips of his ears, but he still looked annoyed. “You don’t have to say stuff like that just to make me feel better.” Then he nodded at the book in Bucky’s hands and asked, “What’s that?”

“Figured you’d like some entertainment.” Bucky held the book up. “Mrs. Goldman gave it to me for changing out her tire, said it was her husband’s. It’s called _Metropolis_.”

“More science fiction?” Steve asked. “Don’t you ever get tired of that nonsense?”

Bucky glanced at the iron lung. “You got a big machine breathing for you, Steve. Your life is science fiction.”

Steve sighed, a thin rattle of a sound, and said, “Alright, go ahead.”

Bucky beamed at him and opened the book to the first page. “‘Now the rumbling of the great organ swelled to a roar…’”

***

“I remember you,” Bucky said again, a quiet rumble in the stifling silence. Steve couldn’t help himself; he knelt down in front of Bucky once more, reached up and put a hand to Bucky’s neck, just to feel the steady pulse beating against his palm. Bucky looked up at him with dazed, dead eyes. “Your bloody knees and knuckles. Paint and charcoal on your face and hands. Berry stains on your mouth.” His gaze trailed down and he placed a tentative hand on Steve’s chin, thumbed over his bottom lip.

Sam pulled Steve away again and Bucky’s hand fell to his lap. “Jesus, Cap, you got some kinda death wish?” He sighed. “Look, I don’t think we should release him.”

“Are you kidding?” Steve asked. “You want to leave him here to die?”

Sam ticked fingers up as he counted. “One, no. Two, whoever put him in that thing is probably planning on coming back for him and I don’t want to be here when they do. And three,” he gestured to Steve’s neck, “he’s still programmed to kill you.”

“Not true. He had the chance to kill me and he saved me instead.”

“ _After_ shooting you, beating you to a pulp, and pushing you out of a helicarrier. I applaud him for fighting whatever’s going on in his head, but if he loses…” Sam trailed off and stared down at Bucky.

Silence stretched between them, memories of all the damage the Winter Soldier had done, all the damage he could do yet.

“So what do you recommend?” Steve asked.

“We wait,” Sam replied. “Let whoever’s got him locked up come get him, and then we make our move.”

Before Steve could think it through, the sound of heavy-booted footsteps approached.

“...Unless that somebody is actually just using him as bait,” Sam added.

“We can’t leave him here,” Steve replied. The machine compacted again and Bucky screamed. Steve couldn’t imagine what it would feel like, having a prosthetic arm hooked up to his brain, still able to feel everything but maybe in a different way, maybe a more painful way.

Before the machine could do more damage, Steve grabbed the lip of the device and wrenched it upward. It moved a fraction of an inch, so Sam joined in. They yanked it up again and it lifted enough that Bucky could slide his arm out.

Once freed, he collapsed onto the ground, clutching his prosthetic close to his body, eyes squeezed shut. Steve hauled him to standing by his good arm and said, “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

He grabbed up his shield and they turned out of the room the opposite way they came, away from the now-dozens of footsteps marching down the hall. He wrapped Bucky’s good arm over his shoulders, held him close. Sam led, holding his flashlight above the barrel of his gun.

Steve heard it before he saw it: the sound of a heavy object embedding itself into concrete a few feet in front of them, like throwing his shield into a wall. Sam didn’t see it at all and clotheslined himself on a chain, choking and falling to the ground. His flashlight flickered off.

He rubbed his throat and clamored back up, sweeping his gun around in the dark. “The hell?”

Despite the suffocating darkness, a glowing form of a woman entered the hallway from a room off to the side. Her body lit the space with a pulsing red glow, like the blood in her veins was made of fire. Her eyes, too, provided light, silver mirrors that looked everywhere and nowhere at once. She pulled the spiked ball of her flail from the wall and used the inertia to wrap it around her arm.

The footsteps behind them caught up and Steve glanced back. Dozens of armed guards filled the hallway, armed with StarkTech guns. Their black armor would camouflage them completely but for the reflected brightness of the glowing woman standing before them.

“Superhero Registration Enforcement,” she said, voice tinny and steady, inhuman like JARVIS’. “Stand down.”

***

An obnoxious beeping sound woke Bucky several hours later, head on his arms resting on the headrest of the iron long, his fingers threaded through Steve’s hair.

Groggy, he sat up and looked around, tried to make sense of his surroundings and why he wasn’t on floor cushions, huddled under blankets; why Steve was trapped in a big machine and why his eyes were sunken, lips blue.

“Steve?” Bucky asked, panic boiling in his veins. He stood, knocking the chair over behind him, putting fingers to Steve’s neck. His pulse fluttered under his fingertips, barely there at all. The ventilator lay silent.

Bucky ran out the door and down the hallway, looking for any medical staff bustling about on night shift. He ran into an older man in a white coat, grabbed him by the shoulders.

“How did you get—” the doctor asked, but Bucky interrupted him.

“Steve Rogers. Room six-sixteen. He’s in a lung but it stopped working. He’s not breathing.”

A whirlwind of activity followed. The doctor retrieved two nurses, one of whom ran to Steve’s room while the other went to get additional assistance. Bucky watched from the doorway as the doctor unlatched the ventilator; it made a sound like opening an ice box at a butcher shop. Bucky wrung his hat in his hands as he watched them pry off the paddles on Steve’s chest, pick up his little body and put it on a stretcher.

Two heavy sets of hands grabbed either of Bucky’s arms, and a deep voice said, “Sorry, pal, no visitors.”

Bucky looked at both of them, wide-eyed, and pleaded, “No, no, you don’t understand—”

“Don’t know how you got in here,” the other one said, “but you sure ain’t gonna be allowed back.”

Bucky fought them, struggled in their hold. He twisted and looked behind him, stumbling, watching as they wheeled Steve out of his room.

“Steve!” Bucky shouted, useless. “Steve!”

Steve blinked open his eyes, slow and bleary as they wheeled him down the hallway in the opposite direction. He focused enough to recognize Bucky, to lift a bone-thin arm toward him and mouth, _Bucky_. Then they turned a corner, took him out of sight. Bucky screamed, struggled so hard that his shirt ripped over his shoulder. He managed to free his left arm and spun around, decked the man still holding him square in the jaw, freeing himself from his grip.

Bucky made a break for it, mindless, following the sounds of high-pitched beeping that faded into the distance. The men caught up with him within moments, grabbed him by the back of the collar and hauled him bodily backward.

 _“Steve!”_ Bucky sobbed, still kicking, still fighting to no avail.

By the time they made it to the lobby, his heart hadn’t stopped racing. Tears drenched his face and neck, but he grew too exhausted to continue fighting.

The men threw him out of the hospital, and Bucky stumbled, fell onto the pavement. They tossed his book onto his chest with an additional reminder that he wasn’t welcome back.

Bucky lay there, staring up at the stars, catching his breath. His best friend was dying six floors above above him, fighting a battle all on his own. This time, there were nobody’s ears he could box, no jumping in at the last minute, nothing Bucky could do to save him.

***

Sam, arms up, looked back at Steve and said, “You know I’m in for whatever you’re thinking, but just so you’re aware, we’re definitely outnumbered.”

Steve looked to Bucky beside him, still supporting most of his weight.

“She’s one of Stark’s. Tracked me down a day ago,” Bucky said, nodding at the woman, then tipped his head back and gestured to the troops behind them. “Controls them via hivelink. Not human. We can’t win.”

The woman announced in her eerily robotic voice, “Steve Rogers, codename: Captain America; Sam Wilson, codename: the Falcon; James Barnes, codename: the Winter Soldier; you are under arrest for violation of the Superhero Registration Act. Please lower your weapons or we will be required to use excessive force.”

Steve let his shield slide off his arm and propped it against a wall. Sam took his second gun out of its holster and placed both of them on the ground.

“Sorry, lady,” Bucky said, “can’t get rid of the arm. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Without thinking, Steve asked, “Does that mean you’re...armed?”

Sam gave them a blank stare. “Seriously?”

One corner of Bucky’s lips twisted into a dark smile.

“Please follow me to the nearest detainment facility while we await transit,” the woman said, and turned on her heel to march down the hallway, the flail wrapped around her forearm and swaying with her steps.

“So you got a name?” Sam asked the woman. “Or a number? An acronym? A series of unpronounceable symbols, maybe?”

“Delta,” the woman replied without turning around.

“You haven’t read us our Miranda rights,” Steve said. The ominous thrum of dozens of boots marched behind them. “If we’re under arrest, we have the right to speak to an attorney—”

Delta replied, “Clause 22.1B of the Superhero Registration Act states that any being acting beyond the capacity of standard human functionality while pursuing vigilantism will henceforth be considered superhuman and thus unprotected by the United States Constitution.”

“Hold up. Are you seriously telling three decorated veterans of the US military that we’re not protected by the Constitution?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” Delta replied.

“Stark’s gone too far,” Steve said. “This has to stop.”

Delta led them into a room so brightly lit that Steve had to squint his eyes before they could adjust. The large space housed a line of barred cells like a prison, glowing the same dull red as Delta, a low buzzing emitting from them.

Delta opened the first cell, unaffected by the power flowing through the bars. In the light, she looked almost human: tan skin that no longer glowed under the florescent lights of the room, long brown hair, black t-shirt and baggy camo pants; mostly nondescript except for her mirrored eyes. The long chain of her flail wrapped around her body, over her shoulder, around her waist, hanging loose and ready to strike. Steve preferred his shield, but the flail had similar strategic merit—range, power, durability.

She glanced at Bucky and gestured for him to enter the cell. Now that she stopped announcing the details of their arrest, her voice lost its robotic reverberation, sounded like a regular voice but spoken through a phone, like Stark’s when he suited up. “You know the drill, big guy.”

Bucky let go of Steve’s grasp and dragged himself into the cell. Steve held onto him for as long as he could, fingers grasping onto Bucky’s until he couldn’t anymore, and his hand dropped back to his side. He could feel the heavy presence of too many guns at his back, and he steeled himself to keep from picking a fight anyway. If he did, he wouldn’t be the only one getting hurt.

What looked like a dentist’s chair sat in the center of the cell, sharp instruments and a claw-like headrest protruding from it. A young man waited behind it on a swivel chair, dressed identical to Delta. He fiddled with some wires, kept his shoulders shrugged up and avoided looking at Bucky, eyes cast downward at his work. He had a mop of messy black hair, body small but stocky.

The moment Bucky sat down, steel cuffs locked in his ankles and wrists.

As a number of agents grabbed Steve’s shoulders to drag him into his own cell, Steve shouted, panicked, “Wait, wait...what are you gonna do to him?” He shoved off the guards holding him and they stumbled over each other to the ground, dashing toward the cell that Delta entered behind Bucky. She slammed the door shut and Steve stopped short of running into it.

“Stark wants to wipe his memory so that he can join the Enforcement,” Delta replied from the other side.

Steve, unthinking, gripped the bars. Electricity shot through his body, blinding him in pain, and he fell to his knees.

“Cap!” Sam shouted somewhere off to the side. A string of curses followed, and then the sound of a slab of meat getting hit with a baseball bat as a fight ensued.

It took all Steve’s strength to let the bars go, palms blistered over and steaming. More sets of arms hauled him up and dragged him into the next cell. This time, he was too weak to fight them off. “Bucky,” he said, vision clearing as they threw him to the ground in the cell, the door shutting behind him. Another followed on the opposite side, Sam having lost his fight.

Steve rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling, caught his breath, then sat up to see Bucky in the cell beside his, a mouth guard between his lips, body tensed. He looked at Steve through the bars of the cell, eyes pleading, afraid. Delta put both prongs against either of his temples, then readied herself, lever in hand to turn on the machine.

“Ready?” Delta asked, a surprising amount of compassion in her voice.

Steve clamored to the side of the cell, as close as he could without getting electrocuted. “Bucky, no, wait—”

But Bucky looked away, eyes trained straight ahead of him, and nodded.

Delta pulled the lever.

***

A gentle hand jostled Bucky awake.

“He’s alright,” Sarah said, curly red hair more frazzled than usual, dark circles under her eyes. She smiled, but it was weary, matched the dim morning sunrise behind the hospital where Bucky camped out.

Bucky rubbed a hand down his face. His whole body was stiff and sore from sleeping against the hard brick of the building. He shivered in the brisk chill of the morning, breeze coming in from the east and bringing the sea wind with it, but Sarah held a sweater out to him, big and grey, one of Steve’s pa’s. Bucky remembered seeing him wear it a long time ago. Back then, he seemed giant and menacing, screaming at Steve for all his health problems, asking why he couldn’t be like normal boys, healthy boys, boys like Bucky.

Bucky pulled the sweater over his head, tucked his knees into it. “You sure?”

Sarah sat down beside him, pulled a cigarette out from behind her ear that Bucky hadn’t seen under her wild mess of hair. She lit it with a Zippo from her apron and handed it to Bucky, who freed his hands from the sweater sleeves and took it. A dusty pink smudge painted the end of it.

She blew out a cloud of smoke and replied, “No. But he’s alive, and right now, that’s what counts.”

“Awake?” Bucky asked, taking a long drag that sent a wave of calm warmth over his body, interrupted by a spike of guilt that made his stomach churn. If Steve were around, he’d stifle the coughing fit he always got around smoke, pretending it was just a tickle in his throat.

“No,” Sarah replied, “won’t be for a while.” She rested a hand on his leg, gave him another hopeful smile, and said, “He’s in good hands. You should go home, get some rest.”

Bucky nodded. “Sure.”

Sarah stood to leave, white vinyl heels shining with the wet of the grass covered in early morning dew. She lifted her skirt above her knee to pluck out another cigarette from where they hid in the elastic of her garter belt, then tucked it behind her ear. She straightened her hat, sorted out the pleats of her dress, and told Bucky to send her love to his family.

Bucky should have headed to the docks, seen what work they had for him today, worked too hard for his three dollars only to blow a nickle buying Becca some licorice. Go home for lunch, grab a bite to eat, wash up. Then head out to the garage, finish fixing Mrs. Goldman’s car so she could make it to Sunday service.

But none of it mattered. None of it would make Steve’s lungs breathe for themselves. None of it would wake him up.

So Bucky huddled in Steve’s pa’s old sweater and closed his eyes, let the cedar smell of it convince him he was in the Rogers’ apartment, curled up on the sofa on a Sunday morning, waiting for Steve to wake up so they could get into whatever trouble lay ahead.

***

Bucky screamed, a muffled noise around the mouth guard, a current ripping through his body that he fought against. The steel cuff over his metal hand bent, creaked and ripped away from the armrest, inch by inch.

“Killswitch the arm,” Delta directed at the young man behind the chair. He looked at her with a steely gaze, not afraid, but defiant. His eyes glowed red like Delta’s veins.

Steve stood from the floor of his cell, his hands already healed over. He stared at the long row of armed guards, but not a single one’s chest rose and fell with breath. Gloved fingers didn’t twitch on triggers. _Not human_ , Bucky had said.

“Whatever you’re thinking, Cap, don’t do it,” Sam told him, but Steve was already gritting his teeth, already hovering in front of the bars.

Delta tapped a small metal band at her temple, the tendrils of which snaked over the side of her face like a circuit board. Panic fell over her features and she asked, “Bodi, what did you do to my hivelink?” She looked around the room at the guards who stood still and lifeless. “Now is not the time for your goddamn moral highground! Get me the killsw—”

Steve didn’t know what the hell a hivelink was, but now that it was down, he made his move.

He gripped the bars. Electricity shot through his body again and he screamed so loud that he couldn’t hear anything anymore. With everything he had, he wrenched them apart, and they gave way with a crack that short-circuited the electricity. The room fell silent but for Bucky’s unyielding groans of agony. Steve stepped through the opening, teeth still vibrating, breathing heavy and labored.

Delta stepped between Steve and the chair, the mace ball of the flail swinging at an orbit by her hip. “Like the man said, Cap: don’t do it.”

He took another step forward and Delta let go of the chain. He dodged the mace, but Delta swung it around until it circled his shoulders and wrapped around his neck. It choked off his air supply, got tighter the further back he stepped. He grasped at it with newly burnt fingers, useless, then Delta yanked him forward and he fell to his knees in front of her. With his last burst of power, he kicked out his foot and swung it around at her legs, took her off balance enough that she toppled over, pulling the chain with her and jerking Steve down.

It left him just enough of an opening that he loosened the chain from his neck, pulled it off him and jumped back up.

Delta made it back to her feet, but not before Steve could dart to the chair and wrench the lever back up. The man with the fire eyes did nothing to stop him. Instead, he watched idly, expressionless. Bucky fell silent, and his eyes, which had been rolled into the back of his head, fluttered shut. His head lolled to the side.

“Bodi!” Delta shouted. “Don’t just sit there, do something!”

The fire-eyed man, Bodi, shrugged and signed out a phrase with his hands that Steve didn’t understand.

“You are _not_ just a healer!” Delta replied. “Will you please turn the fucking hivelink back on?”

Steve scrambled over Bucky, prying apart the probes at his forehead, but before he could make much progress, Delta grabbed him by the collar and the belt of his pants and threw him off, sent him flying into the bars of the cell. He rolled to the ground, wind knocked out of him. And as always when he'd get knocked down, he gritted his teeth, clenched his fist, and pushed himself back up.

The moment he made it to his feet, Delta swung at him in a flurry of blows that Steve parried and blocked. He landed a few punches, but it was like hitting the side of an armored truck. The harder he hit, the more damage he did to his own hands, his punches barely registering to Delta, who moved with the flow of the inertia, used his own force against him.

“Hey, Cap!” Sam shouted. Steve glanced over, but Delta used his distraction to sucker punch him in the gut. It made him bend over and gag, but not nearly as bad as it used to be before the serum. He utilized his position to surge forward and shove Delta into the bars. “Catch!”

Steve spotted a switchblade hurling toward his face and caught it, flipped it open and waited for Delta to barrel toward him again. He dodged her when she did, grabbed her wrist and spun her back toward him. Bucky taught him that trick, back when they practiced dancing in the living room of their old apartment. Except now, instead of wooing a lady Steve never had a chance with, he squeezed a deadly foe tight to his chest and jammed the knife onto her throat, pressed in just enough to make her squirm. Though her skin felt like flesh and her veins looked like fire, she was cold, and no blood escaped the small incision. Instead of a heartbeat, he felt her chest rattle under his grip, whirring like a fan.

Delta went still, the chain of her flail in a pool by her feet, hands gripping at Steve’s forearm. 

“Alright,” Steve said, panting, “it’s time to talk.”

***

Sarah came by now and again, brought Bucky food, water, told him there was nothing he could do. He should run on home, she suggested, take his mind off things for a while. Let the doctors do their work.

But Bucky trusted doctors about as far as he could throw them, so he sat behind the hospital, hour after hour, if for no other reason than so Sarah would know where to find him if Steve’s condition got any worse.

On his third read-through of _Metropolis_ , he heard footsteps approaching from the alleyway, not the dull thud of soft-soles, but the heavy clack of dress shoes.

Bucky stood when a man approached him. He pocketed his book and ran a hand through his unkempt hair. Though he always kept his trusty comb and a tin of pomade on him, he ran out a few days ago, spent his last dime on a malt.

The man smiled at him, warm and polite; a soldier by the look of him, dressed in uniform, all sharp lines, patches and symbols Bucky didn’t recognize but saw more and more of these days. He might have been a few years older than Bucky, looked a little bit like Steve in fact: blond hair and green eyes, freckles that made him look boyish, a little bit buck-toothed, but didn’t have the same glint in his eyes Steve did, the same ferocity. Another place, another time, Bucky might’ve smiled at him different, bought him a drink maybe, offered to thank him for his service the good old fashioned way.

The man held out his hand and said, “Sergeant Lenox. Strategic Scientific Reserve.”

Bucky took it, wary. For a soldier, he had soft hands, like somebody put him behind a desk instead of a gun. “Bucky Barnes. If you’re here to kick me off the property—”

Lenox laughed. “Gosh no. You know, not a lot of fellas would take on guys twice their size for the sake of a sick friend. That’s the kind of diligence and loyalty we look for in the SSR.” When Bucky didn’t reply, Lenox continued, “Is there a reason you haven’t enlisted yet, Mr. Barnes?”

Bucky shrugged. “Ain’t my fight.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lenox replied. “I hate to say it, but I have it on good authority that your friend isn’t looking too good.”

Bucky grimaced, heart sinking into his gut. “What’s this got to do with Steve?”

“We’re working on a new medicine right now, and your friend might be a great fit for our test group. Unfortunately, there’s a lengthy wait list.” He paused to smile, but it put Bucky on edge, reminded him of a wolf inching toward its prey. “I have a proposition for you, Mr. Barnes.”

***

“Bodi, right?” Steve asked, Delta trapped in his grasp. “You said you were a healer?”

Bodi picked up a tablet and pressed a few buttons on it, then looked at Delta and tilted his head.

“Yes, he’s a healer. And I’m not your fucking interpreter, B,” Delta spat.

He frowned at her and waited.

“Okay, _fine_ ,” Delta relented. “He says he’s guided by the spirit of the great Mother to bring peace to those who seek it, yadda yadda.”

“Wait, hold on, what’s happening now?” Sam asked.

“He turned the hivelinks back on—” Delta stopped when Bodi gave her an exasperated look. “He turned _my_ hivelink back on. I can hear his thoughts, but he can’t hear mine without giving me access to control the bots behind us. Which he’s not _doing_ because he’s a _moron_.”

“Why can’t he just talk?” Steve asked.

“He’s mute,” Delta replied, then sighed when Bodi pursed his lips. “Not mute. Bound by a holy vow of silence. Whatever.”

“Can he make Bucky better?” Steve added. “Bring back his memories?”

Bodi looked at her for a long moment, and she said, “Don’t make me ask that.”

He gave her a stern glare in response.

Delta groaned, and replied, “Bodi wants to know your opinion on the idea of ignorance being bliss.”

“No question,” Steve replied without hesitation. “I’d take the pain of truth over blissful ignorance any day.”

“So what would the truth do to your friend when he remembers the last seventy years?”

Steve hesitated. “I don’t…”

“Bodi linked him in yesterday, went through his head,” Delta explained. “He’s been through a lot. Too much for any one person to handle, blood of innocents on his hands, pain of torture. It’s the only reason I wanted to wipe him...we saw what all was in there, agreed it was best to put him through a couple minutes of pain and keep him in the safety of darkness. Then you showed up and the game changed.” She paused and added, “That was Bodi, not me. I’m just doing what I was told.”

“But Stark wants him for the Enforcement, right?” Sam asked.

“It’s not like HYDRA. It’s a real job...we’re government employees. The Soldier could make a whole new life for himself, and as his memories came back…” Delta trailed off, hesitant.

“What?” Steve said.

“We could wipe him again, if he wanted. Or maybe Stark could figure out a way just to wash the bad memories out. Point is, he would get a say in it. But as he is right now, he’s a danger to himself and everybody else. We want to put him in safe hands.”

“The safest hands are mine,” Steve replied

“The safest hands are the ones with the best medical care. And Stark would set him up with the best lawyers in the country when he’s put on trial for his crimes.”

Steve looked to Sam, who held up his hands. “Sorry, Cap, this isn’t my call.”

“We’re going to be in a shit-load of trouble if we do that,” Delta hissed at Bodi.

“Do what?” Steve asked.

“Bodi wants you to know that we’ll honor whatever decision you make, now that you understand his perspective. You’re the _worst_ , B.”

“And if we decide to take him with us?”

Delta hesitated, and grumbled, “We’ll tell Stark you escaped and give you as much of a head start as we can.”

Steve lowered the knife and loosened his grip on her. “Why would you do that?”

Delta stepped away and faced him, arms crossed over her chest. “When Bodi linked in, he felt what the Soldier felt for you, and it was greater than what he’s ever felt for anybody else. Which means you’re his next of kin and thus have the right to medical attorney.” Bodi rolled his eyes behind her and made a noose motion with his hands. “ _Fine_ ,” Delta continued. “Bodi’s words: ‘In the eyes of the great Mother, you are wed eternal, a single soul scattered into separate forms. What you choose for him shall be his fate.’ But with more enthusiasm and wild hand gesturing because Bodi is a fucking _sap_.”

Steve opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out. For years, he’d been the one to make the tough calls, the calls that got people injured, killed, all in the scope of the greater good. The big picture, that’s what mattered; a clear path to goodness had always been lit before him.

But now, fog clouded over both paths.

“Your choice,” Delta said. “You can take him and risk it, or you can leave him here with us where we’ll make sure he gets the best possible care, the easiest transition back to normal life.”

Bodi stood and approached Steve, reached a hand out and placed it on his arm. Though his eyes glowed red, he still reminded Steve of a younger version of Bucky. Underneath the swagger and the glint of a devious smile, Bucky had the same aura of purity and sweetness that emanated from Bodi. Bucky didn’t deserve all the pain he’d been handed in life, the trauma and tragedy. He should have been given the privilege to grow old, live out a hero’s life in the comfort and freedom of home.

“And if you choose the former, Bodi has a spell he can try to ease your process, even though that is going _far above and beyond what we agreed_ ,” Delta said, glaring at Bodi.

“I need him,” Steve admitted, quiet. “I can’t leave him with Stark, not when there’s a war going on.” He looked at Bucky, still unconscious on the chair. “But who knows what’s going to happen to him once his memories start coming back. He might not be Bucky anymore, when it’s all over.” Steve couldn’t say it out loud, but somewhere hidden deep inside him, a voice that sounded an awful lot like his Ma said, _Remember Bucky the way he would want you to remember him. Let him go._

“So what’ll it be, Cap?” Delta asked.

***

“Ma said I’d find you out here.” Steve kicked Bucky’s calf with the toe of his shoe, and Bucky looked up from _Metropolis_ , craned his neck. For a second, Steve looked so much bigger than he really was, like the lung made him six foot tall after all. He had his hands shoved in his pockets, wearing the same tattered button-up and suspenders as when he collapsed, pens and pencils in a neat little row in his shirt pocket.

It couldn’t have been right. Steve was dying; even Sergeant Lenox said the medicine might not work, might be a risk to try at all. Hell, Steve could have been dead already and nobody had bothered to tell Bucky about it yet.

Steve loomed over him, the sun behind his head, casting his face in shadow. It’d been a long while since Bucky ate anything, even longer since he had a good night’s sleep. He’d probably passed out and this was his dream, Steve smiling down at him like nothing ever happened.

It was just hours ago that Bucky had spoken to Sergeant Lenox. No way Steve could have healed in that short a time.

“You never shut the hell up and now you got nothing to say?” Steve asked, taking a seat beside him, where his mother sat before, exactly like her—lithe hands, straight nose. Only difference was that Sarah kept a cigarette between her fingers and Steve usually had a pen between his.

“Are you…?” Bucky managed. His stomach lurched like cresting over a wave on a boat.

“Yeah, Buck. I’m okay,” Steve said, and smiled in that shy way that Bucky liked to daydream about whenever he needed something good in his head, when he came home from a long day of work to cold potatoes and warm milk waiting for him, collapsed on his bed and thought about the only person in the whole damn world who made life worth living.

Bucky reached out and pulled Steve into him, buried his face in Steve’s neck. He threaded his fingers in the back of Steve’s baggy shirt, body all skin and bones, sharp edges and warmth.

“Jeez, Buck. It’s not like I died,” Steve replied into Bucky’s hair, but clutched him just as tight.

Bucky pulled away, ran the back of his hand over his eyes and shoved Steve lightly. “Shut up, you almost did.”

“C’mon, have a little faith in me. It’d take more than that to put me out.”

“What’d they do to you anyway?” Bucky asked, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Steve shrugged. “No clue. One minute, you were reading, the next minute I woke up in a bed and Ma filled out my discharge papers. She told me you got kicked out.”

Bucky ran a nervous hand through his hair. “May have decked an orderly on your behalf.”

Steve grinned, proud. “That’s one for the books.”

Bucky pulled him closer, and Steve let his head fall against Bucky’s chest, looking out onto the city below, streets they knew like the back of their hands; streets they ran through past curfew to make it on time for a picture show; streets that Steve sketched on used newspaper print when he ran out of real paper.

He threaded their hands together since nobody was around to tell them they shouldn’t.

Some paperwork needed signing still, then there’d be a physical, and after that some kind of oath, but Lenox told Bucky that he’d ship out for basic in a couple months’ time, get put into a special unit to test him, see if he was a right fit for some special program they were working on.

“So,” Bucky began, “I got some bad news.”

***

Fury’s underground barracks weren’t the worst place to live, but they weren’t nearly as nice as the Avengers tower had been. Still, it was better than Steve’s apartment growing up, with the total lack of water pressure, rat infestation, leaky ceilings, and Mrs. Goldman who played the radio too loud because she was hard of hearing. Better yet, the barracks were worlds better than sleeping on the frozen woodland ground of eastern Europe, living on edge that any moment might have been their last.

Steve had a suite with its own bathroom, a lumpy sofa against the bare brick walls facing a dozen monitors where Steve kept up to date on the war. He sat on a dusty old folding chair in front of them, a hot mug of coffee in his hands, flicking his attention between a press conference with Stark and Parker on monitor one and the closed-circuit feed of Speedball in prison on monitor six.

It’d been a little over a day since they made it back from the Enforcement base.

_“‘Choose a memory to give from which other memories may flourish. Though the Soldier’s mind is but salted earth, with care and thoughtful worship to our Mother, the seedling may sprout and blossom to greatness, spread its seed, and a garden may grow from the ashes.’”_

_“So...any memory?” Steve asked._

_“‘Any memory that you would like to give.’”_

On the couch behind him, Bucky stirred. He’d been out since the wipe, but Bodi assured Steve and Sam that the great Mother was watching over him. Steve stood, set his mug down on the trunk that served as a coffee table, and knelt in front of Bucky, reached out and wiped his hair from his face.

_Bodi touched Steve’s temple. It reminded him of his time in an iron lung, right before Bucky enlisted, when he ditched his date and scaled a building just to see him, just to read to him, just to fall asleep running his fingers through Steve’s hair._

_Bodi smiled and took his hand away. His fingertips glowed red like his eyes, and he walked the memory carefully over to Bucky, pressed it to his forehead. Steve watched as the light transferred to Bucky, redness flashing across his face before disappearing._

“How hard did that orderly hit me?” Bucky groaned, bringing his hand up to his forehead. “Can’t remember a damn thing.” He blinked his eyes open and looked at Steve. Once his eyes focused, he blinked them a couple more times, looked up and down Steve’s body. “That lung really did a number on you, huh? You look like a million bucks. Shit, how long’ve I been out?” He looked around, “And where are we? And why does my arm hurt?” He went to lift his metal arm but Steve grabbed it before he could, held it down at the wrist. There would be time for that later. Panicked, Bucky asked, “What the hell kinda trouble did you get me into this time, Steve?”

Steve let out a small laugh. The corners of his eyes stung. “I’ll explain it all later. Just…c’mere.” Even though his bottom lip quivered, Steve leaned down and kissed Bucky, chaste and sweet. It was a long time coming, he knew, but after all this time, Bucky’s lips were just as soft as he always imagined.

He pulled away and Bucky asked, “Are you kidding me? I blew off Louanne McGillicutty for you, you know. I deserve a little more than that.” Then he grabbed Steve by the shirt and dragged him down for another, this one harder, all tongue and teeth and desperation, wet with streaks of tears falling down Steve’s face.

Steve let go, pressed his forehead against Bucky’s. Bucky wiped a tear away with the pad of his thumb and said, “Aw, c’mon, Steve, I’m not that bad a kisser.”

_“‘Tread carefully, for you may brush against poison, ensnare yourself in traps.’” Bodi said. ‘“Though beautiful, the garden may be deadly.’”_

“Nah, Buck,” Steve replied. “Just been in that lung a long time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings, etc.:
> 
> Very mild spoilers for Civil War. Basically just the general premise, stuff that's already blasted all over the internet. It's also based on a comic arc that has been around for almost a decade. Spoilers also for the post-credits scene of Ant-Man.
> 
> I didn't do a whole lot of research. Please excuse any and all medical and/or historical inaccuracies.
> 
> TW for blood, graphic violence, torture, hospitalization, brief mention of alcohol, brief mention of Bucky/other, homophobic language, and smoking.


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